Canon Rebel XT Ive had mine for 6 months now. Great camera you cant take a bad picture with it. I took these pictures with it on the lowest resolution with the wrong setting cause i was in a rush. I had it on automatic for close ups.

Although the Rebel has higher resolution, the Nikon is suppsed to have a bit better metering and handles low light situations better. You can't lose with either. If I were you, I would look at the lenses I would be needing, look at the reviews and pricing on those, and it might guide your decision.

They are both great and will do more than you will really ever need. I bought my parents the rebel XT because I like Canon's lenses better than the Nikon ones but I'm kind of picky.

Best of luck... this is how I started and the next thing you know I've got about $80K of camera gear!

Look at the photographers row of any major sporting event, and you'll see a sea of white, Canon L series lenses.

More professional photographers prefer Canon glass - as do I. Herein lies where the real investment lies. Camera bodies come and go. The best one depends on who last released the newest model - Canon or Nikon. But you spend waaaay more in glass, so you don't really want to change your mind about which system you buy into down the road.

well i have seen people go from a p&s to a dslr and take worse photos. but i dunno.

Part of this has to do with the fact that most P&S cameras boost the color and sharpness in-camera extensively. Many DSLR cameras don't do extensive enhancements out of the box (or usually have such settings turned down by default)...so they'll have less color and sharpness in the initial picture but ultimately contain more detail in the raw picture. This is to allow for more thorough tweaking after the photo has been taken.

There's also other reasons I'm sure...incorrect choice of focusing points in more advanced systems, etc. They are called "point and shoot" for a reason...